Landfill Meditation: Crossblood Stories

by Gerald Vizenor

In these fourteen stories Gerald Vizenor leads his crossblood characters out of romantic thickets into a new tribal world of psychotaxidermy, laser holograms, and urban ceremonies. Dancing with tricksters, animals, and language is never dangerous in this collection. With the comic pleasures of tribal tricksters, Vizenor's fantastic characters arise from the burdens of racialism and noble savagism. Martin Bear Charme, in the title story, owns a reservation and conducts seminars on refuse meditation, pantribal fantasies, and animal languages. He restores the sublime connections between the refuse and the refusers, and earns a fortune at the same time. Almost Browne, another crossblood transformer, was born in the back seat of a hatchback, matured with computers, and projects laser demons over the reservation. Other crossbloods win a summer ice sculpture contest, own sovereign sections of interstate highways, and discover instant coffee.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Native American

211 pages, Hardcover

First published November 22, 1991

About the author

Gerald Robert Vizenor is an Anishinaabe writer and scholar, and an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Reservation. Vizenor also taught for many years at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was Director of Native American Studies. With more than 30 books published, Vizenor is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, and Professor of American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Reviews

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is fantastic and everyone who "doesn't get it" or finds it "postmodern" needs to take a step back and realize that not everything exists within their tiny little worldview. These stories are magical.

[Laur · Rating 3 out of 5]

of the satire i keep happening to read, I liked this the most and thought the satire WAS actually doing something, but I do wish that every time there was a female character there wasn't a sexual description or action attached to them

[Nated Doherty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmmm...I'm not sure exactly what Vizenor's going for here. It seems like a "mongrel" (a word he uses a lot) volume consisting of works that are a little bit short story, a little bit polemic, and something else that I can't put my finger on. But it is certainly not straightforward standard fiction. I get the feeling that Vizenor is laughing at my frustrated attempts to 'understand' this book...but it was interesting, and his language can be beautiful.

[Sean]

Huh?

[Gretchen Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of brillinat post-modern native lit, difficult to read, until you just relax into it and start laughing.